All's Right With the World
by chaletian
Summary: Dean Winchester’s life is pretty close to perfect. He has a loving family, a nice house, a great career. He had to sell the Impala when his daughter was born, but hey, you can’t have everything. But what's with the freaky dreams about hunting demons?
1. Chapter 1

**All's Right With the World  
By Liss Webster**

**Author's note:** Supernatural and its characters belong to the mighty Kripke, the CW, and probably other people too. Whatever. Whoever owns it, it's not me. From the spoilers I've not been able to avoid for this week's episode, it sounds like this might be similar, but I wrote it a while ago, honest!

**Part One**

_Goddamn spirits. Dean ducked as a particularly malevolent apparition hurled furniture. And not lightweight, fold-up chair type furniture, either. This spirit was hurling fucking wardrobes. Still, its hurling-furniture inspired glee was at least distracting it from Sam, who was in scrabbling away in the corner trying to disinter the remains. _

"_Will you just burn this son of a bitch?" panted Dean as he narrowly avoided being flattened against the wall by an armchair. _

"_It's part of the wall, Dean," explained Sam with deliberate patience, the kind of tone of voice that made Dean want to punch his brother, as much as he loved him. _

"_I don't care if it's frigging at one with the house!" said Dean, reaching for the shotgun that had somehow ended at the wrong end of the room. "Set fire to it!" His hand had found the shotgun, and he swung it up, firing at the spirit, which obligingly dissipated. Dean made his way over the battleground of broken furniture, and whistled as he saw what Sam had been dealing with. Radius, ulna, metacarpals. An arm. In the wall. And it was all too clear that there was more where they had come from. _

"_No wonder it's pissed," said Dean drily, crouching down beside his brother. "Forget burying their skeletons in the closet; this family was all about the drywall." Sam shot him a disbelieving look. _

"_You're such a jerk, Dean." Dean was about to respond in kind, the sibling exchange of insults being his winning category in conversation, when the spirit picked its moment to reappear. This time, instead of throwing furniture at Dean, it decided that simply throwing Dean would be more efficient._

Dean Winchester jerked awake, disoriented and sweating. He swiped a hand over his face, and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Six o'clock. He gave into the inevitable and got out of bed, quietly so as not to disturb the woman beside him. He grabbed the sweats from the chair at the foot of the bed and pulled them on, then a pair of Nikes, after retrieving the one he had kicked under the bed the night before. The morning jog – a figure of eight around the block – was an immutable part of his routine, and Dean felt like he needed the regularity of it particularly this morning.

He was halfway down the road before he let himself think about the dream. He'd been having them more and more frequently, and couldn't figure out why. Dreams of him and Sam, doing the kind of things you saw in horror movies. Which would be fair enough if Dean had been doing some illicit horror movie watching, but he hadn't been. These dreams had come out of the blue, and were disturbingly vivid.

Dean wondered, as he waved hello to Florrie Carter, the sprightly octogenarian who always seemed to be gardening whatever time he went past, what his subconscious was trying to tell him. Must be a doozy, whatever it was. Still, dreams were just dreams, after all. No point on fixating on them. Probably just meant he should give Sam a call – he hadn't seen him since Thanksgiving, after all, when their respective families had descended on Lawrence. Dean had offered to have the family over at his, but Mary had insisted. Tradition was tradition, she had said, and Dean kind of agreed, and hadn't pressed the point.

Half past six, and he was back home, ready for the day. Shower – dress – breakfast. Kate was up by the time he got out of the shower, trying to corral Amy who, at two, was proving to be more of a challenge than anything else in Dean's life. He kissed his girls goodbye, and headed into work, sparing, once again, as he did every day, a thought for the Impala. Ah, the Impala. Kate got pissed when he mentioned the Impala, which was understandable, because he'd sold it when Amy was born, and wishing for it back was kinda like wishing Amy hadn't been born. But, God, he'd loved that car.

Still, there was nothing wrong with what he drove now (not nearly as exciting; didn't respond like the other), and Dean was satisfied with his life. He pulled into the hospital carpark on this thought and, raising a lazy hand at Ray, the security guy, began his day.

It was when he was on the ward that things started being freaky. Really, really freaky, not just crazy dream freaky. They were talking about Hayley, the little girl with the congenital heart defect. He and Steve, the cardiac surgeon, had been arguing about whether she was ready for surgery, in that non-arguing way doctors adopt in front of their six year old patient and her parents, when "Dr Winchester and I agree that there is a substantial risk…" somehow mutated into "Yeah, that's right, Dean, there's my boy," and Dean just stared at Steve Mitchell and couldn't match up his words and the words he was hearing and Jesus Christ, was he having some kind of fit? Had the pharmacy been flinging their drugs about willy nilly? But then Steve was back to being Steve, and was clearly waiting for some kind of response, and Dean had to admit that he hadn't heard him, and then they started from the beginning. But Dean couldn't shake off the creepy feeling he had on hearing those words. Because they may have been innocuous in themselves, but the emotion behind them – that had been enough to freak anyone out.

His shift was over eventually, and Dean went home. Kate and Amy were in their evening routine, dinner – bath – bed, and he was just in time to read Amy a story and kiss her good night. And he kissed Kate as well, but decided not to mention that he was hearing things. They went to bed, and Dean Winchester dreamed.

"_Crappy motels," groused Dean, as he nearly impaled himself on a cupboard door placed at just the wrong height for anyone entering the room. He dumped his bag on the bed closest to the bathroom and turned to his brother. "You see a diner anywhere out?" Sam shrugged, and tossed his bag on the other bed. _

"_There's probably one in the town," he said, nodding his head in the direction they had just come. "Want to walk in?" _

"_Sure," agreed Dean placidly, pulling on his jacket. "It's freezing out," he added by way of explanation. Sam nodded, and made to open his bag, but the zipper wouldn't budge. _

"_What the—" Sam started, then realization dawned. "Dean!" Dean grinned, tossed his little brother the tube of superglue used in making Sam's possessions completely inaccessible (which in retrospect seemed to be a strategic error but hey, you couldn't think of everything), and headed out the door for the diner, with Sam's moaning in his ears. _

"_Dean! It's five below out there! Jerk!" _

"_Bitch," said Dean to himself, smiling. All was right with his world._

_Part Two coming soon..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two**

It happens again three days later. Dean's been good to his word, and driven to see Sam, and they're just out in the yard, barbecuing their lunch, with Jess, Sam's girlfriend, reading some chicklit crap under the tree. Everything's cool. Everything's normal.

"Dean, you gotta come with me!" Dean looks at Sam, perplexed.

"Come where?"

"Now, Dean!" There's something pulling at his arm, pulling hard and it won't let go, and everything's dark and fuzzy and all can Dean is feel Sam pulling him along, and then Sam's voice is shouting.

"Dean! What's wrong, man?" And Sam looks pretty freaked, which isn't that surprising, because Dean's just pushed him away so that he nearly fried himself on the grill.

Sam gives Dean a beer, and Dean tells Sam about the recent weirdness, and they both laugh at the idea of being demon hunters, because they would have _loved_ that as kids, instead of their boring middle-class existence in the middle of nowhere. And Sam glosses over the whole thing, but Dean can see that underneath the laughing and the cracks at Dean's cooking, Sam's worried. And Dean's worried too, because he's a doctor and he knows that this – whatever _this_ is – is not normal.

He thinks maybe if he concentrates hard enough, it will stop. If he focuses on real life, the weirdness will just disappear down the back of his mind and never bother him again, like that ten bucks that falls down the back of your sofa and you never see again. And then Dean wishes he hadn't picked that simile, because only that morning he had been retrieving Amy's favourite plastic duck, and had come across the ten bucks he had lost the week before. It had been right there the whole time.

But he tries, anyway. Concentrates on his wife and his child and his job and his perfect life. And everything's fine. He helps kids at the hospital, and laughs and looks kinda sheepish one of the nurses says he's got the makings of the best paediatrician she's ever known. He plays with Amy when he has the time, and kisses Kate at night. He even manages not to think too much about the Impala. He visits his parents, and cries uncle when Mary whoops his ass at Scrabble. Medical jargon is forbidden. He says that's cheating, but he won't argue with his mother. He hangs out in the garage with his father, and they fix the engine of some wreck John rescued from the scrap yard.

Everything's fine, and Dean relaxes. He's on call, and someone pages him from the ER. A kid's been in a fire, and they want a paediatric consult. He goes down, and he's helping with the kid – the little girl – and all of a sudden his arm's on fire – actually on fire, he swears it, and it hurts so bad he thinks for a minute he might pass out, and he tries not to panic, but _shit_ that hurts, and he can see the marks blossoming on his forearm and – and he's fine. Except that pretty much everyone in the ER is staring at him like he's an escapee from the psychiatric ward, and Dean wonders if they're right because there's not a scratch on him.

He changes in the locker room, and he's staring at himself in the mirror when Jack, the attending, comes in. He's going to have a Talk, Dean recognises the look from when Claire-from-Ohio was coking herself up every morning. And Dean knows this is important, knows that his career rests on convincing Jack that he's not going psycho, but he can't concentrate. All he can see is scars that aren't there, that have never been there. There's no reason for there to be a scar just there, across his chest, but he knows, somewhere, that it should be there. A mark on his shoulder. A jagged cut still visible on his belly. They're not there; there's nothing there; it's just crazy talk.

"You OK, Dean?" Jack asks, and Dean wants to laugh, and say yeah, it's just… just… and there's nothing coming, because what the hell excuse is there for thinking your arm is on fire, except maybe some kind of stupid prank, and Jack's not going to fall for that. And for a moment Dean's tempted to try, to see how far he can bullshit his way out of it, how much he can make Jack buy, and then he's a little shocked, because he's not that guy. He's never been that guy. So he tells the truth, and it feels strange and right at the same time.

"I don't think so."

_Third and final part coming soon…_


	3. Chapter 3

**All's Right With the World**

**Part Three**

Dean stays home for a week. Jack had listened to what he'd said, and had suggested the time off, and Dean was so grateful for the fact that he hadn't been admitted to the psychiatric ward straight off, that he agreed. More time to spend with his family, he'd said, with a grin which fooled neither Jack nor himself. "Concentrate on relaxing," Jack had said. "It's probably just stress."

"Yeah," said Dean, and he tries to believe it. Tries real hard. It's as good an explanation as any other: stress. It's a hazard of the occupation, after all. Doctors spend much of their time battling stress, and though Dean has never really had much of a problem with it before, he thinks maybe it's all backed up, and come out like this, all at once. But he doesn't really think it's stress. Dean thinks he might be going mad.

He dreams, all the time. Not just when he's asleep, but any time he lets his mind wander. He'll be at the sink, rinsing a glass, and then he's somewhere else entirely, talking to people he's never met, seeing things he's never seen. He's constantly disoriented now, seems to flicker between reality and this crazy dreamworld. He tries to concentrate on the here and now, to make sure his mind is fixed on mowing the lawn, or playing with Amy, or sorting laundry, or shooting hoops in the back yard, but his mind won't cooperate and keeps slipping away from him.

"Dean, you're going to be OK." He's sitting on a chair in the living room, and it seems to him that both Kate and Sam are talking to him at the same time. Not together, not standing side by side, brother and wife, but in the same place, one laid over the other, like two layers of tracing paper, saying the same words, wearing the same expression of worry and fear. Dean doesn't believe either of them.

His perfect life is sliding away, and Dean can't make it stop. His family, his house, his job. Being a decent man, the kind who goes to church, the kind who helps out elderly neighbours. All that is slipping away, he can feel it running through his fingers. Their house is flickering on and off now, like a light with a dodgy circuit. One second Kate is there, and the next second it's Sammy, and for the life of him Dean can't keep track. It's making him dizzy, and he just wants to curl in a ball and close his eyes and wait until the storm passes. He closes his eyes, but it doesn't help, because he panics that when he opens them again his life will have disappeared and he'll be in some scummy motel room somewhere with no life and no family and no job, and that'll be something he deserves. Deep down, he realises that he doesn't deserve his life, but he can't figure out why.

Their house is vanishing, and Dean tries his hardest to cling on, but the very walls seem to be dissolving, Kate's pale blue and white stripes transmuting into a florid green 70s pattern, the wide king size bed with its fresh linen morphing into ubiquitous off-white polycotton. He wants this life. This family. But he feels a large hand clasping his, and Sam's voice urging him home, and Dean knows it's not for him.

SPNSPNSPN

The Winchester boys sit on a jetty overhanging the lake, a six-pack of beer between them. Sam nods to a clearing fifty feet away.

"That's where it got you." Dean glances over his shoulder, and shrugs.

"Can't say I remember." Sam takes a pull at his beer, and looks at his brother curiously.

"What _do_ you remember?"

Dean is silent. Sam has explained what happened, what the witch had done to him, packed his mind away into a corner of his head where it couldn't escape. He'd been out for days, Sam said, but Sam had been able to break the curse, and get Dean back. It was all confusing for while, but Dean remembers where he went, who he was, what he had. Nothing he would be having in this life, that's for sure. So he lies, because he does that.

"Not a damn thing, Sammy."

"Dean. Seriously, man. It's Sam." Dean can't help but grin at the look on Sam's face, the look that he swears hasn't changed since Sam was about eight. He grabs a bottle, and slaps Sam on the shoulder.

"Sure thing, Sammy." Sam punches him in the arm.

"Jerk."

"Bitch." And Dean smiles, and relaxes, because all's right with his world.

THE END


End file.
